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Gujarat’s Heartaches and ‘Model’ Hangovers

GANDHINAGAR: Heavy
tippling, like lingering love affairs causes hallucinating heartaches and
horrible hangovers. Managed by it’s first woman Chief Minister,Gujarat
is now manfully battling similar after-effects of a development
model that is currently marked out for India-wide implementation.

Narendra Modi may have
single handedly secured an overwhelming mandate to rule India on the
basis of his record in Gujarat but the fact remains that 97 of the 159
municipalities in the state are in such a despicable financial state that they
are unable to pay their basic electricity and water supply bills.It is only
after a change of guard in the state that skeletons securely locked for long
are falling out of the cupboard exposing the deep-set rot within.This is just
one of them.

Local self-government
body elections are due in Gujarat this year.It is a’ make or break’ elections
for Chief Minister Anandiben Patel who replaced Modi last year.In fact, this is
the first major statewide poll after he
left to takeover national responsibilities.All eyes are set on the upcoming
poll engagement.

According to an
official summation,the total dues of all such municipalities in the state up to March 31,2014 added up to over Rs 540 crores.As things stand, a large
chunk of these municipalities are BJP controlled and any adverse poll outcome
is likely to have a direct bearing on the current chief minister’s political
standing.

Saddled with a
Himalayan problem,and the debt riddled municipalities making it clear that they
were in no position to pay up,the Patel government has decided to offer an
OTS (one time settlement) of the total amount which continues to shoot up
regularly as fines for non-payment keep adding up on the already bad debts.The
money would be adjusted in the books against the money due to be given to the
civic bodies in lieu of the abolished octroi tax.However,according to a
published report,in the case of at least two municipalities Halvad in Morbi
district of Saurashtra region and Rapar in Kutch, even at the rate of 30 per
cent, outstanding dues cannot be recovered even over 20 years.

Meanwhile the Gujarat
government’s one time blue chip company, Gujarat State Petroleum
Corporation(GSPC) is in dire straits.The Company had hit national
headlines in 2005 when the then chief minister Narendra Modi had made
extravagant claims of 20 trillion cubic feet of gas in the offshore oil and gas
fields during it’s exploration of the KG basin, Andhra Pradesh. The claims
fell flat on it’s back and the GSPC which was headed for an unheard
period of nine years by a
bureaucrat, D.J.Pandian, is now sans both a full time chairman as well as
MD. Pandian,however, manipulated his way to become the chief secretary using his
PMO connections,overlooking the claims of his senior Dr S.K.Nanda. GSPC is at
the centre of an ongoing tug of war within the bureaucracy as well as
among chief ministerial aspirants within the state cabinet with lethal
consequences at both ends. Meanwhile the
overzealous continue to make news for all the wrong reasons.

The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation school
board created a sensation of sorts with a circular asking all it’s schools
including 65 Urdu medium ones where Muslim students study,to recite Saraswati Vandana
and perform puja on Vasant Panchami. Schools affiliated to the Gujarat Secondary
and Higher Secondary board had their own take on another event.The Board forced it’s schools to reschedule their second
term examinations by making it compulsory for them to organize drawing
competitions,under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan on January 30, the death
anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.

That the board
was under pressure to take such a decision becomes clear from the
fact that it was well aware that January 30 is celebrated as Martyrs day and
yet had gone on to draw up the examination schedule which it subsequently
altered, forcing all schools to reprint the examination papers at additional
financial costs.The move has neither gone down well with the parents nor even
the local BJP leaders who felt that the issue was subjected to needless
politicization due to lack of foresight. And as if this was not enough from
January 30,all government and private secondary and higher
secondary schools in Ahmedabad district has students singing two more
songs as part of their morning prayer ritual. One is “manushya tu bada
mahan hai”a song closely identified with the RSS and the other is “Vaishnav jan
to”, a Mahatma Gandhi favourite. Apparently the two songs have been clubbed
together to mute already strident criticism of Sangh Parivar
intervention in education. Also not gone unnoticed is
the absence of the Gandhinagar MP and the veteran BJP patriarch, L.K.Advani at
the Pravasi Bhartiya Diwas and Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors Summit.Both the
events were inaugurated by the Prime Minister.This despite the fact that the
veteran leader had, at a function attended by chief minister Patel, expressed
his desire to attend if invited. Invitations went out to the US secretary
of state, John Kerry but Advani did not get one. Interestingly, when Modi
was first denied a visa by the US government, Advani was one of the
frontline speakers at the public meeting organized at the Kankaria
football ground in Ahmedabad to protest the denial to his then protege. How times change, and people too!

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R.K. Misra is a field journalist with over forty years of experience working for some of the top news publications in India and abroad. Presently the Roving editor of The Free Press Journal of Mumbai, he is also the State Correspondent of the New York based international news agency, Associated Press (AP), news dailies Hitavada of Nagpur, Daily Post of Chandigarh and Outlook magazine of Delhi , to name a few. Beginning his professional career with The Times of India in Ahmedabad, he has worked as Senior Assistant Editor with Probe India and it’s sister hindi publication ‘Maya’ in Delhi and as Special Correspondent and later Roving Editor of The Pioneer and the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS). Specialising in cross-country coverage of conflict areas like Punjab and Kashmir at the height of militancy , he has also done stints for the Gulf News of Dubai and the Arab News of Saudi Arabia besides the Tribune of Chandigarh, and Vijay Times of Bangalore. His specialization, however remains, Gujarat. He is presently based in Gandhinagar, the state capital of Gujarat.